Hi Kjell -
Appreciate the detailed response.
Granted our embodied carbon scope doesn’t cover all interiors and MEP, even if we bumped it by 25% (going from 4,000 metric tons CO2e to 5,000), it has a pretty small increase to the overall footprint, which is about 17,000 metric tons CO2e.
We are talking about 12,000 metric tons CO2e operating emissions on a 100,000 gsf higher educational building with a design EUI of 33 across 60 years on a grid that is putting a significant amount of renewables online in 2025 and shooting for zero-carbon by 2050.
Our major take away is: the grid isn’t cleaning fast enough to cut down operational emissions.
And my major take away from your ‘number of years before operational is greater than embodied’ above, is that if you cannot design to zet-zero energy on year 1, the operational is going to blow out the embodied within a short timeframe.